But since when does the culture of corruption at the NYPD really care about the law?

It’s hard enough, apparently, to keep them from raping and robbing at gun point!

The Truth

But since when does the culture of corruption at the NYPD really care about the law?

It’s hard enough, apparently, to keep them from raping and robbing at gun point!

carma

The Truth, are you some deranged lunatic who complains about police parking their unmarked vehicles and saying its causing a hazard. get over it.

seriously, its not worth arguing. yes it gets done. yes, its annoying. do you even have proof that by having a unmarked vehicle parked illegally has caused any kind of injury of death? its illegal parking for christ sakes.

and regarding just giving them a ticket. im sure you would even advocate for towing their vehicles. Then What?

lets say you ticket the officers. yeah, they can get away w/ it by claiming it as an emergency later. but isnt that just adding a whole bunch of beaurocratic bullshit to deal with?

do you have a hatred for cops or something? heh, as mentioned, theres always going to be bad cops. would you rahter have NO cops instead?

let the boys in blue do their jobs. and yes, i do have friends who are officers.

carma

The Truth, are you some deranged lunatic who complains about police parking their unmarked vehicles and saying its causing a hazard. get over it.

seriously, its not worth arguing. yes it gets done. yes, its annoying. do you even have proof that by having a unmarked vehicle parked illegally has caused any kind of injury of death? its illegal parking for christ sakes.

and regarding just giving them a ticket. im sure you would even advocate for towing their vehicles. Then What?

lets say you ticket the officers. yeah, they can get away w/ it by claiming it as an emergency later. but isnt that just adding a whole bunch of beaurocratic bullshit to deal with?

do you have a hatred for cops or something? heh, as mentioned, theres always going to be bad cops. would you rahter have NO cops instead?

let the boys in blue do their jobs. and yes, i do have friends who are officers.

Driver

So your typical UPS or FedEx driver can park wherever they want (for a cost negotiated between the company and the city), but the cops have to find a legal spot or pay up (theoretically, not in practice). That makes sense.

I see your point about the right conditions being necessary for the delay of one particular responder to make a difference in the outcome of a situation. I’d still rather have the cops close to their cars.

The Truth

I see the standard of proof only goes one way for you, carma?

They might, maybe, be delayed a little bit if we don’t let them BREAK THE LAW, and I should just accept that assertion? But the fact they choose to park in places judged hazardous by professionally certified engineers – that you find highly dubious?

No – I don’t advocate towing their vehicle unless it is a critically dangerous location, since that WOULD interfere with the job. But YES – they need to pay their tickets for BREAKING THE LAW just like everybody else.

And no – they cannot just “claim” it was an emergency. If they don’t have the 911 call, an arrest, or a substantially verifiable memo book entry to prove it, they need to pay the consequences for their choice to BREAK THE LAW.

I most certainly do NOT have a “hated for cops.” I am very proud of hero cops. At the same time, I believe that corruption needs to be rigorously eliminated. And that is not happening. When we turn a blind eye to a festering culture of corruption, it blights the reputation of all the good cops.

And make no mistake, they gradually are all become corrupt, as the cancer spreads, they cover for each other, and make bad habits of breaking the law.

But I don’t believe all integrity has been lost, and I believe there is hope for redemption.

I’ll let them do their job – which includes ticketing illegally parked cops. When they don’t do that, I will hold them accountable for their corruption. There will always be bad cops, but I disagree with your blase attitude of tolerating them. They need to be purged immediately!

The Truth

And to be clear, carma, there is a difference between “annoying” and “illegal and corrupt.”

The Truth

@SB_Driver:disqus I like your point about the delivery trucks. For the life of me, I can’t understand why they don’t have escalating fines, and if that doesn’t curb behavior, jail time in increasing increments.

The arrangement to allow illegal parking is dangerous. My biggest pet peeve are the USPS trucks that park in crosswalks and block the view of the pedestrian signal.If they did get serious about the penalties, then maybe we’d finally get some real movement on rational delivery zone management so they could do their job, without the traffic and safety mess we currently have!

carma

@40daebbed12b53745f7f9f21456e6154:disqus
you’re right there is a huge difference between corruption and annoying

but parking your car illegally does NOT make a corrupt cop

a corrupt cop is one who commits a crime like stealing/raping and lying about it

a parking infraction is NOT corruption.

The Truth

Sorry @d8d46f16f380afef59ca318522397233:disqus , but is absolutely does become corruption when it is persistent ILLEGAL parking – in violation of State law and direct defiance of mayoral direction – and more importantly, when it is systematically covered up by the officers collectively to avoid accountability.

If they just happen to park illegally, like anybody else, they can be ticketed like anybody else. No corruption – just a mistake, like you suggest. BUT – when they use their position as a police officer to keep most of the appropriate tickets from getting written in the first place, and then make the tickets they did get go away, that can be considered nothing but corruption.

To be sure, it is low-level corruption – but some of us really believe we should identify, discipline, and when necessary fire the bad apples BEFORE they make the whole barrel rot. How can you even suggest things haven’t gotten out of hand when there are cops on the street this week literally robbing and raping our citizens?

Are you REALLY such an advocate for an unaccountable police state? As I showed, the State has adopted a CLEAR law, which intentionally denies police officers this power. That is to say, we elected members of two houses of the legislature, and a governor. All the legislators in both houses deliberated and developed limits on police power, and the governor did not veto those limits. When the elected mayor observed that the police were breaking the law, he directed them to stop.

Is it REALLY your position that we should allow the police to ignore our entire democratic legislative process, and to ignore our elected civilian mayor, so they can just do what they want?

As a general rule, people who break really big rules tend to break lots of little rules too. People who have so little regard for the law that they rob people at gun point generally don’t turn out to be sticklers on their parking. So if they keep breaking the littler rules, especially if there is actual discipline, that’s a clear indication that they’ve got to go.

The NYPD has done a great job of reducing crime by applying the Broken Windows hypothesis to the general population. Now they just need to apply it to internal discipline, because the way we’re going now, some of the worst criminals are wearing a badge. And that’s a disgrace to all the good cops!

rubber saddle

Not my big deal, but Carma seems a little off.

“parking your car illegally does NOT make a corrupt cop”
True. But a lot of the NYPD parking behavior is probably a little corrupt when you look at the pattern. Like using official placards for unauthorized personal use, using official placards to park at hydrants, refusing to write tickets to illegally parked vehicles somehow associated with the NYPD, falsifying documents or intentionally making errors on summonses, destroying lawfully issued tickets, lying on the stand, etc.

“a corrupt cop is one who commits a crime like stealing/raping and lying about it”Huh? So you can steal and rape as a cop, as long as you tell the truth about it?

rubber saddle

Not my big deal, but Carma seems a little off.

“parking your car illegally does NOT make a corrupt cop”
True. But a lot of the NYPD parking behavior is probably a little corrupt when you look at the pattern. Like using official placards for unauthorized personal use, using official placards to park at hydrants, refusing to write tickets to illegally parked vehicles somehow associated with the NYPD, falsifying documents or intentionally making errors on summonses, destroying lawfully issued tickets, lying on the stand, etc.

“a corrupt cop is one who commits a crime like stealing/raping and lying about it”Huh? So you can steal and rape as a cop, as long as you tell the truth about it?

carma

@7d84473213f40db0d63aa6432f2eddae:disqus

so what you are trying to say is that any parking behavior that is not right automatically makes you a corrupt cop.

how simplistic thinking is that. look, the fact is that parking abuse is definitely a problem, but it is NOT a safety hazard. you can bring up all the engineering statistics you want, but the fact is that, there has not been any proven instance in which an illegally parked car has contributed to a major increase in traffic deaths.

also, thank you for taking things completely out of proportion. if you steal and rape as a cop, AND even if you tell the truth, you are still corrupt.

are you the holy saint in which you follow every law to the dot? have you NEVER jaywalked, have you NEVER parked illegally, have you NEVER ran a red when you were biking? under your assumption, doing any of these makes you corrupt.

sorry, but id rather improve overall police behavior rather than nitpick at bad parking policy.

Driver

I’m sure there are plenty of good cops breaking the small rules as well. It seems to me that most cops break the small rules, that doesn’t necessarily make them bad cops. How far do we take it? Do we want all cops to walk to the corner and wait for the walk signal before crossing? I mean it IS the LAW. Do we want (the few) cops on bikes to come to a complete stop at every stop sign? Hey, it’s the law right? Do we want the cops to follow every little law to a T? And more importantly, do we want them to enforce it against us to a T? Maybe you do The Truth, but the many of us expect a little leeway on the little things based on common sense, and it is only fair that we give the same.

The Truth

@SB_Driver:disqus – let’s stick the facts of this case, shall we?
I’m not saying we should go out and nitpick their every move. I am not suggesting we ticket them for jaywalking while everybody else pours across the street.

I am saying the law applies to them THE SAME WAY it applies to everybody (except to the extent that legal exceptions have been made – in this case that was explicitly denied them by State law). The problem is their continued efforts to put themselves entirely above the law.

Look, these guys were issued summonses for their parking. So they already got the exact same leeway that every other New Yorker gets. Their illegal parking was obviously egregious enough that a police officer or TEA felt it was necessary to issue a summons, instead of letting it slide.

So if they broke the law enough to warrant legitimate enforcement – and there was no overriding emergency that required the illegal parking – they need to show enough integrity to pay their fine like everybody else.

The law applies to them just as much as everybody else. I’m not asking to hold them to some crazy higher standard. I’m stating what should be painfully obvious, and shouldn’t require any mention, but somehow does…
The law applies to them too.

rubber saddle

Still don’t think this is a huge issue, but Carma’s just miles off center!

“so what you are trying to say is that any parking behavior that is not right automatically makes you a corrupt cop.”Nope. Not at all. Where did you get that? Clearly not in anything I wrote!

A parking infraction doesn’t make you corrupt. Duh! A whole pattern of questionable and probably illegal actions to get away with parking illegally without paying any tickets can be corrupt. Months of news on ticket fixing scandals showed that’s what some officers have been doing. Double duh!

Is that the case with the unmarked cars too? I don’t know. It could be. There’s no reason for Carma to categorically insist it’s all good.

As for me. I rarely drive, and more rarely get tickets. When I got tagged because I forgot to move a car for alternative side parking, I paid without complaint. Do the crime, pay the fine, right?

I don’t think the problem’s such a big deal. But paying your parking tickets shouldn’t be a big deal either!

A Beautiful Day Outside

Things I know for sure that I don’t want to spend my time on:

A comment war between “The Truth” and “Driver.”

carma

rubber saddle, im not disagreeing w. the ticket fixing thing. yes that is corrupt. in any police force there is always some kind of corruption b/c you have the authority.

but still, that doesnt tie in the fact that officers who illegally park are now immediately corrupt.i defend the fact that sometimes illegal parking is necessary. when you are an unmarked car and you are doing a drug bust. do you look for a legal space which potentially could be 5 blocks away? no. you get your job done. if you are making a visit to inquire about an incident, do you park your patrol car in a legal spot even though you are not in an emergency situation? no. you get your job done even if it means parking illegally. some of you folks really do make villains out of simple parking violations.

The Truth

@d8d46f16f380afef59ca318522397233:disqus there you go again! The lengths you will go to apologize for police corruption is just unbelievable!

Talk about misinformation! Nobody was talking about somebody doing a drug bust. That clearly falls under the legal exemption for “emergency operations.” Give me a break! Your blatant dishonesty is insulting to everybody, including yourself!

Please, pretty please, stop making up bogus excuses for cops who are clearly breaking the law, violating their oaths, and making the whole city look bad. Please!

Cops can get “the job” done WITHOUT breaking the law, without dishonoring their badge, the department, our city, and the very notion of a democratic form of government. WHEN they break the law, they are NOT getting the job done, since the very definition of the job is to enforce the law! They themselves are becoming the criminals when they knowingly continue to break the law as an ongoing habit, just because it suits them, and they think there’s nobody there to stop them.

BE HONEST for once. We are NOT talking about necessary parking situations in the LINE OF DUTY. We are talking about PERSONAL CONVENIENCE (even if they happen to be on duty while breaking the law, they’re STILL breaking the law!!!). It is neither justified by the LAW nor by departmental regulations. It doesn’t even stand up to the basic standard of common sense – unless of course your notion is that cops are always right, no matter what. How hard is that to get through to you?

And @carma:disqus , you seriously need to inform yourself, or stop pretending you don’t know what’s going on. You ask: “making a visit to inquire about an incident, do you park your patrol car in a legal spot” Hell yes, you do! Why? Because that’s what our democratically adopted LAW REQUIRES you to do. Because that’s what the elected Mayor has directed. Because that is official departmental policy. Because there is no reasonable rationale for putting your personal convenience ahead of the public good.

Because IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!

If somebody goofs up, that’s ok. There’s a difference between misreading a confusing street sign and just doing whatever you want because you’re a cop and you think you’re above the law. Anybody who drives and parks enough in this city will get a ticket, and they ALL have to be responsible for the consequences of their own actions. There are all sorts of people who drive for a living in this city – none of them get carte blanche to break the law, and they all find a way to “get the job done” without the need to devalue our laws and democratic institutions.

But when the police rig the system to let them keep breaking the law over and over again, to avoid the necessary consequences of their misdeeds, we have to crack down hard. There can be no room in our society for deliberate, ongoing, unapologetic abuse of authority. Unfortunately, that is what is happening in New York City right now. And people with an attitude like yours are directly contributing to the problem. Your willingness to defend police misconduct makes discipline harder.

Please stop indulging in this fantasy fascist world of yours where the police have unlimited powers, make their own rules, and we thank them for it! Reconsider the role of the police within a society of laws, think about our democratic form of government, then tell me again that we should just let the cops take whatever liberties they want to “get the job done.”

Joe R.

My 2 cents here-yes, the ticket fixing thing is corrupt, but I personally think a live and let live philosophy serves everyone. How would in be if every petty rule were enforced to the letter for everyone? Horrible if you ask me. The “broken windows” theory of policing means going after small stuff like vandalism, shoplifting, public urination, etc. on the theory that stopping minor criminals before they commit major crimes pays in the long wrong. These are the quality of life crimes which used to be ignored. Once they stopped being ignored, major crime rates dropped. They didn’t drop further when police started harassing the general citizenry with jaywalking or jaybiking or parking tickets because people who do those things often do so for practical or safety reasons, not because they intend to start robbing banks if they can get away with them. By the same token, I’m happy to give the police some leeway to park where they want, even if not on call, if that means they’ll leave me alone if they happen to see me pass a red light, either on foot or on my bike.

If you ask me, a lot of the ire I’ve seen directed at cyclists in general is due to a perceived double standard. On sites like this you see people complaining about how motorists, especially police, break every traffic law. Some even approach police parked in bike lanes and confront them (a really bad idea even in the best of circumstances). And then some of these same people will complain vehemently when they get ticketed for not adhering to the same impeccable standards they feel motorists should. Granted, violating certain traffic laws has much greater consequences in a motor vehicle than on a bike, and there should be a somewhat higher standard for motor vehicles. By the same token, parking illegally generally only inconveniences cyclists, not harms them. And if there are instances where illegal parking really does place cyclists in a dangerous situation, then yes, the police should get a ticket unless they can show there was an emergency situation. Save the complaining for the really big stuff which matters, and it might be taken a lot more seriously. I’m generally no fan of the police, but I realize they have a difficult and dangerous job for which they’re not paid nearly enough. I’m happy to cut them some slack.

Joe R.

@The Truth-illegal parking is generally a citiwide problem. How much of a problem it is depends upon your viewpoint. In any case, draconian enforcement, for either the police or UPS, isn’t a long term answer. As with most traffic issues, the situation can only be resolved with better infrastructure. Maybe if we got rid of some on-street parking for private cars, and replaced it with loading zones/police parking zones, the problem of illegal parking would go away altogether. We would even decrease personal car traffic besides (people won’t drive somewhere if they can’t easily park). In general, when certain laws are broken over and over again by a large percentage of the citizenry, either there exists a problem with the laws themselves, or with the playing field (ie. infrastructure in this case). The only long term successful solution is to change one or the other. The former 55 mph national speed limit was a perfect example of this.

The Truth

@2555783a6f62598b6aadd2d882a4830f:disqus I mostly agree with you, but I find it necessary to again clarify my basic point, since everybody seems to be misconstruing it:
We’re NOT talking about stalking officers to nitpick their every action. We are talking about holding accountable those officers whose parking was so egregious that other law enforcement officers ALREADY TICKETED their vehicles. And there is already a mechanism for those tickets to be dismissed if the vehicle was responding to an emergency.I unapologetically insist that officers must obey the law to the SAME extent as everybody else when they are not exercise their power in the public interest. If you go on break, park legally. I did not make this rule up. It was passed into law by our legislators, endorsed by the governor, and its application has been reinforced by the Mayor and NYPD policy. The officers know the rules ahead of time. If they choose to break the rules, is it really asking so much for them to be accountable?And I also must insist that identifying officers who have a problem following the rules by tracking those who can’t seem to stop parking illegally (and getting caught on red light cameras when they were not responding to an emergency) will help root out those officers with an attitude that they are above the law and prone to abuse. The will probably all have a few errors, but those with a clear pattern will stand out.I completely agree with you that “if we got rid of some on-street parking for private cars, and replaced it with loading zones/police parking zones, the problem of illegal parking would go away altogether.”Unfortunately, when we accommodate loading and police with illegal parking, that removes most of the impetus to actually find a real solution. As long as UPS is allowed to block the bike lane and force us into traffic, as long as we turn a blind eye to the police breaking the law for their own convenience, they settle into a sense of comfort with what they’re doing. If they were held accountable two things would happen – they would improve their behavior, and they would certainly make sure there was adequate curb space designated to meet their real needs.So yes, I agree with your conclusion that “The only long term successful solution is to change one or the other.” I strongly disagree that we improve anything by tolerating a culture of corruption within the police, where officers break the law, ignore mayoral direction, and defy departmental regulations, simply as matter of their own personal convenience.

The Truth

I also want to emphasize the red light cameras, since these articles are consistently written from the perspective of a police officer.

The outstanding fees are not just for parking. They also include the tickets for running red lights and getting caught on camera. NYPD made it a clear policy that officers caught on the camera would be responsible to pay the tickets if they were not responding to an emergency.

The NYPD has been clear with its own officers – no running red lights just because you feel like it. We’ve all seen it. Most of the time, it doesn’t look too dangerous, although I’ve seen a couple close cases that looked unnecessary. Apparently the department felt that the appearance of officers violating the law was unacceptable, and perhaps they had enough problems with collisions and liability to merit some concern as well.

From where I sit, I can see NO justification for allowing the practice. Unlike with parking, where there is some hypothetical case where the officers need to rush somewhere else, I can’t imagine any excuse for allowing officers to run red lights when they aren’t responding to a call.

Some people might think that’s minor. They’re right. BUT isn’t the “minor” territory where you want to put your disciplinary net? Do you really want to wait until an officer robs or rapes somebody before you begin to have a disciplinary process to address the problems?

Just how much do you want to test the slippery slope of the mentality of “above the law?”

Driver

“There are all sorts of people who drive for a living in this city – none
of them get carte blanche to break the law, and they all find a way to
“get the job done” without the need to devalue our laws and democratic
institutions.”
Breaking traffic and parking laws is done regularly on a regular basis in NYC as a way to get the job done by a variety of businesses. Some, like the movie production companies, actually do get carte blanche to do it.

” Anybody who drives and parks enough in this city will get a ticket, and
they ALL have to be responsible for the consequences of their own
actions.”
This is not true. Many people who drive for an employer are given the discretion to park illegally when necessary, and the company pays the tickets (and is legally responsible for them as well as the registered owner). UPS is still the obvious example, but look at all the other trucks delivering in NYC peppered with tickets. Parking tickets are not given to drivers, they are given to vehicles. These tickets are not given to the cops, they are written to the NYPD. This is really an administrative issue between the NYPD and it’s employees, not a criminal issue. Although this is a violation subject to a fine, parking scofflaws are not criminals in the eyes of the law.

The Truth

@2555783a6f62598b6aadd2d882a4830f:disqus you hit the nail on the head here:

“And if there are instances where illegal parking really does place cyclists in a dangerous situation, then yes, the police should get a ticket unless they can show there was an emergency situation.”

The problem I have been trying to address here is that after they have actually been issued that ticket, they’re just not paying it. And getting away with it only encourages them to continue doing it.

For the last time, the parking infraction itself does not make police officers corrupt. We have been over this, so you bringing this up again either means you’re not even reading or that you are choosing to be dishonest. It is the organized collusion to evade the law that becomes criminal.

The FACT is that these officers were issued a summons for breaking the law. They already got all due consideration by the law enforcement officer who issued the summons. When they cannot show they infraction was due to their duties, the responsibility for the summons is theirs.

Apparently paying for your parking ticket is ONLY an issue if you’re a police officer who feels entitled to get away with doing whatever you want. We should not indulge such a sense of entitlement. It is not legal, it is not fair, it is not necessary for them to do a good job. It only sends the wrong message to them, and to the citizens they police.

They really can be big boys, and pay their own tickets. The UPS drivers, who are faced with much worse parking challenges, aren’t having their trucks yanked off the road for unpaid tickets, after all!

Your last statement would be laughable, if it weren’t so destructive. A sensible solution to cops breaking the law is NOT to say it’s ok for them to break the law. There are two REAL solutions.

Either:
1) Enforce some real discipline
2) Determine the existing law is unreasonable, and pass new legislation.

(There is no mildly convincing argument that the current law is unreasonable, which is probably why it was adopted in the first place.)

To tell cops it’s ok to break the law is to surrender our civil rights, and to neglect our democratic responsibilities. And it’s a recipe for worse corruption, as the ethos that they’re above the law continues to take hold.

The Truth

@SB_Driver:disqus is there no end to the misinformation and misrepresentations?

For the last time, the parking infraction itself does not make police officers corrupt. We have been over this, so you bringing this up again either means you’re not even reading or that you are choosing to be dishonest. It is the organized collusion to evade the law that becomes criminal.

The FACT is that these officers were issued a summons for breaking the law. They already got all due consideration by the law enforcement officer who issued the summons. When they cannot show they infraction was due to their duties, the responsibility for the summons is theirs.

Apparently paying for your parking ticket is ONLY an issue if you’re a police officer who feels entitled to get away with doing whatever you want. We should not indulge such a sense of entitlement. It is not legal, it is not fair, it is not necessary for them to do a good job. It only sends the wrong message to them, and to the citizens they police.

They really can be big boys, and pay their own tickets. The UPS drivers, who are faced with much worse parking challenges, aren’t having their trucks yanked off the road for unpaid tickets, after all!

Your last statement would be laughable, if it weren’t so destructive. A sensible solution to cops breaking the law is NOT to say it’s ok for them to break the law. There are two REAL solutions.

Either:
1) Enforce some real discipline
2) Determine the existing law is unreasonable, and pass new legislation.

(There is no mildly convincing argument that the current law is unreasonable, which is probably why it was adopted in the first place.)

To tell cops it’s ok to break the law is to surrender our civil rights, and to neglect our democratic responsibilities. And it’s a recipe for worse corruption, as the ethos that they’re above the law continues to take hold.

The Truth

I’ve got to let this thread go…

Let me simply conclude with this statement:

If anybody believes that the problems with these officers failing to pay their legitimately issued parking tickets isn’t part of the same working culture that has been partially exposed by the ongoing investigations into ticket fixing and courtroom perjury, then they’re simply not being honest with themselves.

carma

The Truth
I wont add any more fuel cause i feel we’ve exhausted this issue. look driver, and you and i are not going to agree.

but lets think about this. do you expect a Patrol car to feed the meter? Do you expect a police officer to look for a space in Midtown 42nd street, when there is NO LEGAL parking for a good 1/2 mile radius during weekdays?

Again, not everything is black/white. if you want to follow every law in this city by the dotted I, you should be a role model citizen yourself, and never jaywalk, never run a red light on a bike, etc… we can go on and on.

’nuff said

Andrew

@d8d46f16f380afef59ca318522397233:disqus Are you deliberately ignoring what The Truth has been saying over and over again?

The issue isn’t that cops are ignoring a law that everybody ignores and that isn’t enforced. The issue is that they’re ignoring a law that is widely enforced (as well it should be!) against everybody else.

If a group of my coworkers all decide to park their cars on the sidewalk in front of our office, all day, every day, we would promptly be ticketed and probably towed. And if I were caught painting lines on the sidewalk to delineate these makeshift parking spaces, I would be arrested for vandalizing city property. If it’s not acceptable for anybody else, why is it acceptable for cops?

Driver

I don’t want to continue going in circles anymore either, but I am very
curious what the administrative process is supposed to be for dealing with these tickets.
If a cop gets a ticket, is it that cops responsibility to personally write a check and mail it in or fight the ticket on their own as an individual,or is he (or she) supposed to submit it to the department through an established set of channels?

If a cop gets a red light camera ticket, does the department give that ticket to the officer and tell them to pay it as an individual from their personal account?

If the procedure is for the tickets to be submitted to and handled by the department, then the responsibility for the current problem is not on the officers who incur the violations, it is with the NYPD as an organization. If the administration at the NYPD decides not to process these tickets, that does not make the cops receiving these tickets corrupt.

If the procedure is indeed for the NYPD to tell individual cops to handle the tickets on their own (which I highly doubt) then that would put the culpability on the individual cops, but would be a scary indicator of the ineptness of the NYPD administration.

The Truth

@Driver:disqus – I think you are starting to catch on. You could have saved some time reading the article before posting so much, but at least we’re closing in now:
“First they were told they would be personally responsible for any summons that could not be justified or was received while they were responding to an emergency.”So, yes, you are getting a sense for it now when you say, “that would put the culpability on the individual cops, but would be a scary indicator of the ineptness of the NYPD administration.” The problem seems to be that there really is a frightening degree of a culture of corruption that permeates the NYPD. It’s either sheer ineptness, as you said, or willful neglect of accountability. Given all the lengths officers were apparently willing to go in breaking the law to get tickets dismissed when they were caught on wire taps, this is almost certainly just more of the same.

carma

THE END…. PLEASE..

Driver

I read the article. That sentence is not a clear indicator of specific departmental policy on the handling of tickets, it is written by the reporter. Personally responsible could mean the individuals have to handle the ticket themselves (again, I highly doubt this) or it could mean they are liable to have their wages docked the cost of any fined incurred that the dept deems an individual is personally liable for.

Just about any company with a fleet of vehicles will handle the
processing of vehicle tickets for a number of reasons, and if they want
to hold drivers accountable, they do so internally. I would be shocked
if the NYPD really expected tickets on fleet vehicles to be handled by
individuals, for a number of reasons, one of them being that legally the
registrant is responsible, not the individual.

The NYPD officers have explicit rules and procedures in black and
white. The question is do these rules and procedures state that
officers must personally handle any tickets (payments, pleas, etc)
themselves?

I was hoping you would be able to answer the question for me, as you seem to know more about department policy than the average citizen. You might not have the answer to this question, and if you don’t that’s fine. This can be the end of the discussion. Despite our disagreement, you have made some good points.

Joe R.

I was trying to find an answer to Driver’s question and came across this interesting article of “professional courtesy”

One salient quote from the above article: “If after returning to your car you find a parking ticket, pay the friggin thing. Don’t risk your job and the job of the officer who gave it to you.”

I think it’s pretty obvious that professional courtesy crossed the bounds a long time ago among the NYPD. As I said earlier, I’m all for giving police a free pass in certain cases where they’re not actually creating a hazard, but I’m seeing more and more a culture where anything goes.

Joe R.

I was trying to find an answer to Driver’s question and came across this interesting article of “professional courtesy”

One salient quote from the above article: “If after returning to your car you find a parking ticket, pay the friggin thing. Don’t risk your job and the job of the officer who gave it to you.”

I think it’s pretty obvious that professional courtesy crossed the bounds a long time ago among the NYPD. As I said earlier, I’m all for giving police a free pass in certain cases where they’re not actually creating a hazard, but I’m seeing more and more a culture where anything goes.

Driver

That was an interesting piece on professional courtesy Joe.

I’m pretty sure that quote was talking about an officer getting a ticket on their personal vehicle. An NYPD car is essentially a company vehicle. There should be a written company procedure for tickets on company vehicles, which is very different from receiving a professional courtesy or “fixing” a traffic ticket for ones personal vehicle. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the allegation in the article in question is an attempt at ticket fixing, but an issue of a refusal to pay. It seems more an issue of defiance (or possibly administrative incompetence) than of collusion.

The bottom line regardless of whatever procedure may or may not exist is it is the registrants (in this case the NYPD) responsibility to pay the fines, not the individual who received a ticket. The registrant can then go after the individual offender in whatever way it deems necessary to recover the loss, but the legal and fiscal liability is with the registrant.

Driver

That was an interesting piece on professional courtesy Joe.

I’m pretty sure that quote was talking about an officer getting a ticket on their personal vehicle. An NYPD car is essentially a company vehicle. There should be a written company procedure for tickets on company vehicles, which is very different from receiving a professional courtesy or “fixing” a traffic ticket for ones personal vehicle. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the allegation in the article in question is an attempt at ticket fixing, but an issue of a refusal to pay. It seems more an issue of defiance (or possibly administrative incompetence) than of collusion.

The bottom line regardless of whatever procedure may or may not exist is it is the registrants (in this case the NYPD) responsibility to pay the fines, not the individual who received a ticket. The registrant can then go after the individual offender in whatever way it deems necessary to recover the loss, but the legal and fiscal liability is with the registrant.

carma

okay, final final comment.
getting back to this. for an officer’s personal vehicle. yes, they should park legally. no if’s/and’s/but’s. extending the privellage of “lenient” parking shouldnt extend to an officer’s personal vehicle. (nor extended family’s vehicles)but for an unmarked/marked cruiser, i think the privellage to park at illegal spots should be okay, even if its not an emergency, as long as they are ON DUTY. i’ll give the force in blue a little courtesy on that one.